Information for those who can´t quite follow the video about Florence and the Crimean War.The Crimean War was a conflict between Russia and the Turkish Empire. Turkey was backed by England, France and the Piedmont and Sardinia. The Turkish empire was falling apart and the allies didn´t want Russia to benefit in excess from this.

This war began in 1853 and ended in 1856. It was fought almost entirely in the Crimean peninsula. Nobody really wins wars, but at the end of this one, Russia was most badly off. In this war, in which more civilians died than soldiers, the first war correspondents appeared and more photos were taken than in any previous quarrel. Also, for the first time, women looked after wounded soldiers. This last is what we will learn about here. .

Florence Nightingale was an Englishwoman born in Italy. She was from an influential family although she was Catholic. Since her youth, she was conviced that her calling was to look after the sick. But back then, the sick were looked after at home and hospitals were horrible places nobody wished to be in. Besides, it was considered wrong for women to look after men and boys who were not their relatives. But Florence persisted in her intentions and finally got to do what she wanted to when the Crimean War broke out.

The British soldiers wounded in combat were confined in a place called Scutari. Conditions there were so bad that more soldiers died there than in the battlefield. Florence confronted the men in charge there, who didn´t let her intervene. By sending lots of letters to England describing what was happening she obtained the necessary support to turn that dirty place into what today we would recognize as a military hospital. She also managed to have the women who had travelled with her to Turkey be permitted to care for the wounded. The number of soldiers who managed to survive increased spectacularly.